Wife of gen­i­tal mutilator shot dead in Naledi

Matšeliso anna Molise — the es­tranged wife of Maseru busi­ness­man Pe­ter Fred­erik­sen who is cur­rently in re­mand pri­son in south africa af­ter be­ing ar­rested for pos­sess­ing 21 pieces of fe­male gen­i­tal in his freezer at his Bloem­fontein home — was shot by un­known gun­men near her Naledi res­i­dence on tues­day night and died at tše­pong Hospi­tal yes­ter­day morn­ing.

le­sotho Mounted Po­lice ser­vice (lmps) spokesper­son, Clif­ford Molefe, con­firmed the fa­tal shoot­ing of a Mosotho woman “be­tween her home and a taxi/ bus stop in Naleli” but would not con­firm if it was Ms Molise.

“the po­lice re­port i have shows that the now de­ceased was ac­com­pa­ny­ing her vis­i­tor to the taxi rank be­tween 7pm and 8pm when she was shot. she was im­me­di­ately taken to a lo­cal re­fer­ral hospi­tal for med­i­cal as­sis­tance. the doc­tors de­clared the woman dead this morn­ing but i can­not re­lease her iden­tity,” se­nior in­spec­tor Molefe told the le­sotho times.

How­ever, sources told the Le­sotho Times that the vic­tim was 24-year-old Ms Molise. ac­cord­ing to the south african me­dia, Ms Molise was set to tes­tify against her hus­band on 4 Novem­ber. the Le­sotho Times un­der­stands she blew Fred­erik­sen’s covert op­er­a­tion, lead­ing to the Dane’s ar­rest. the gen­i­tal parts were be­lieved to have been re­moved from Ba­sotho women.

south african Po­lice ser­vice spokesper­son, Bri­gadier Hang­wani Mu­laudzi, was quoted by the south african me­dia yes­ter­day: “it is sus­pected to be a hit. We are deeply sad­dened about the mur­der as she had been an in­te­gral part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions against her hus­band. she went to le­sotho leav­ing be­hind her two chil­dren in south africa and re­fus­ing an of­fer of wit­ness pro­tec­tion.”

Fred­erik­sen faces three charges of as­sault with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­ily harm, one charge of as­sault in­volv­ing a mi­nor, pos­ses­sion and man­u­fac­ture of child pornog­ra­phy, re­moval of hu­man tis­sue in con­tra­ven­tion of the Health act and bigamy. the ac­cused al­legedly mar­ried Ms Molise while he al­ready had a wife in Den­mark, hence the bigamy charge.

Mean­while, in an in­ter­view with As­so­ci­ated Press (ap) upon his ar­rest, Fred­erik­sen said he and Ms Molise split ear­lier this year, and blamed his wife for the grisly dis­cov­ery.

“i have told her to come and fetch th­ese things (re­fer­ring to the gen­i­talia); it is her fridge,” he told ap.

on the porno­graphic pho­tos found in his pos­ses­sion, Fred­erik­sen told the news agency he was al­lowed to pho­to­graph women be­ing cir­cum­cised while he was vis­it­ing the re­mote ar­eas of le­sotho.

ac­cord­ing to Mail On­line, Fred­erik­sen al­legedly told the po­lice he kept a record of ev­ery body part, who it be­longed to and when it was re­moved. south African po­lice were also quoted as say­ing his first al­leged vic­tim was in 2010.

Po­lice also found a video of a woman be­ing op­er­ated on, as well as child pornog­ra­phy images. they also found med­i­cal sur­gi­cal equip­ment and anaes­thetic dur­ing their search at Fred­erik­sen’s Cen­tral Free state house. ac­cord­ing to the Daily Star, Fred­erik­sen fled pros­e­cu­tion for il­le­gal pos­ses­sion of weapons in Den­mark and sought south african cit­i­zen­ship in 2006.